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Hello from Mumbai! Apologies in advance if posts this week and next are a bit stripped down and sans images, I’m traveling over the holiday season with limited internet connection. Vacation from the day job, however, does not mean a slow down in the influx of trash tips. Today’s came from Brooklyn Based, a local email newsletter I subscribe to (and which you should sign up for if you, too, live in Brooklyn). The update for today, entitled Green Vinyl, can be found online and read in full here. It features Brooklyn Phono, a local record making company that has started to offer recycled vinyl as an option for bands and labels interested in pressing a record. Check out a video of the process here.

I’m hoping my band can opt for green vinyl when we make our first 7″ this Spring. Our studio, Clean and Humble Recordings, is also located in Sunset Park, so I can’t think of a more local choice.

Speaking of the studio and recycling records, does anyone have any ideas for reusing 78’s made of shellac? My bandmate, Flex Unger, the owner/operator of Clean and Humble, recently inherited 7 crates of crap records and is taking ideas for what to do with the raw materials. You may recall from past posts that Flex is big into DIY recording and musical recycling, e.g. sampling old records to mix new beats and salvaging old instruments to build new ones.

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WITNESS, the organization that “uses video to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations” made this short educational piece on trash pickers in India. Much like the dilemma at the center of Mai Iskander‘s film Garbage Dreams, trash pickers in India are seeing their livelihoods threatened as the government signs more and more contracts with foreign private waste hauling companies. This short and sweet video compares and contrasts New Dehli where trash pickers’ work has been eclipsed to New Dehli where the NGO Chintan has worked to integrate traditional trash pickers in waste and recycling collection even as the city modernizes its systems. But you don’t have to take my word for it…